Hermann von Weinsberg

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Hermann von Weinsberg (drawing from 1539).

Hermann von Weinsberg (born January 3, 1518 in Cologne ; † March 23, 1597 ibid) lived as a lawyer , councilor , beer master and reindeer in Cologne. He became known through the multi-volume house and memorial book (collectively called "Buch Weinsberg"), an early German-language autobiography . This document is of great cultural and historical value and is one of the most important sources for the history of the city of Cologne in the 16th century.

Life

Hermann von Weinsberg, the eldest of 11 children of the Cologne councilor Christian von Schwelm -Weinsberg, traced his family tree back to the Counts of Weinsberg in Swabia. He went to school in Cologne and in the house of the brotherhoods in Emmerich before he began studying at the University of Cologne . In 1537 he made his first degree there as a Magister Artium . In 1543 he left the university as a licentiate in law , but then worked his life only to a modest extent, mostly with family and relatives, as a lawyer. His livelihood was formed by inherited pension property and the assets managed by his two wives, Weisgin Ripgin (marriage 1548–1557) and Drutgin Bars (marriage 1558–1573), who became wealthy as merchants; both marriages remained childless. Weinsberg and his wife Weisgin were plagued by an illness throughout the winter until May of 1556. For treatment, they called in the medicus Doktor Cronenberg, whose findings were for blood contamination .

The center of his life was the area around the Waidmarkt / Hohe Pforte . “I now have my apartment in Kronenberg on the Hochpforte.” The back door opened the entrance to “Haus Weinsberg”, where his widowed mother lived. He also owned an inn and a wine shop in Cologne. While still a student, Weinsberg was elected councilor of the Färbergaffel Schwarzhaus in Cologne in 1543 and was re-elected three times in the following years. In 1549 he resigned from the council, but was re-elected in 1565 and then remained, ten times re-elected, until his death in 1597.

In his life, Weinsberg rarely left his hometown Cologne; After staying in Emmerich in his youth, he was later briefly in the Netherlands four times. He was rather indifferent to the Reformation (he remained Catholic by family tradition, but viewed the Jesuits with skepticism) and turned against the persecution of witches.

Works

The book Weinsberg - "Das Boich Weinsberch", cover (1553)

Weinsberg's extensive autobiographical work is often referred to collectively in the literature as the "Book of Weinsberg", but consists of several parts that have been created over many decades.

First, until 1559, Weinsberg wrote the actual boich Weinsberch , which he himself called boich Weinsberch , a largely invented family history based on medieval origins , in which he traced the genealogy of his family back to the 8th century. In 1560 Weinsberg began to write what he called “memorial books” ( boich der jare ), in which he described in chronological order and in first- person form events from his life and events in contemporary history since his birth in 1517. In this way three other handwritten books were created, namely the liber iuventutis ("Book of Youth", covering the years 1518 to 1577), the liber senectutis ("Book of adulthood", covering the years 1578 to 1587) and the liber decrepitudinis ( "Book of Old Age", covering the years 1588 to 1597). In addition, from 1562, Weinsberg was also the author of the official book of the Church Masters of St. Jakob , which he continued until his death.

The entire autobiographical work of Weinsberg (ie the actual “Book Weinsberg” and the three “Memorial Books”) consists of a total of almost 2,600 double-sided sheets. It was intended, as its author writes, as a “guide” for his descendants as head of the family, who should continue the chronicle. Since Weinsberg had no children himself, he bequeathed it and his property to his younger brother Christian, but after his death there were several legal inheritance disputes, in the wake of which Christian committed suicide; his son Hermann died childless in prison in 1604 after a conviction for the murder of his aunt, so that Weinberg's chronicle was not continued.

In the course of the inheritance disputes, Weinsberg's handwritten notes came to the Cologne court files and about them to the Historical Archives of the City of Cologne , where they are kept to this day under the call numbers Chronicles and Representations 49–52 ; After the archive building collapsed in 2009, all four volumes of Weinsberg were rescued from the rubble.

Importance in historical research

Edition history

Weinsberg's records were ignored in the archive for several centuries and were only rediscovered there around 1858 by the archive manager Leonard Ennen . He recognized the importance of the family chronicle, but published only brief excerpts. Begun by Konstantin Höhlbaum , continued by Friedrich Lau , a four-volume edition of selected parts of Weinsberg's notes was published by the Gesellschaft für Rheinische Geschichtskunde from 1886 to 1898 . The interest of the editors was mainly in the area of ​​politics, so that especially important passages from the everyday and cultural history remained unedited. In 1926 Josef Stein tried to close this gap with a fifth, supplementary edition volume, which in turn only includes parts of Weinsberg's books. In 1961, the popular edition by Johann Jakob Hässlin (which has been reprinted several times since then) appeared, which only contains excerpts from a few selected chapters in a linguistically modernized form.

In 1988, the regional historian Wolfgang Herborn characterized Weinsberg as an "insignificant councilor (...) whose name would have long since been forgotten" had it not been for his autobiographical notes, "the most important example of bourgeois chronicle of the 16th century Century in German-speaking countries. ” A complete annotated edition of Weinsberg's four books, summarized under the title“ Buch Weinsberg ”, has been processed at the University of Bonn since March 2002 and gradually published in digitized form. There is no edition of St. Jakob's official book yet.

Research approaches

The historical source value of Weinsberg's records for everyday and cultural history in general, and the history of the city of Cologne in the 16th century in particular, was already recognized by Leopold Ennen with his first publications.

Since then, Weinsberg's notes have been the subject of many scientific research discussions and are still being evaluated for a variety of research approaches. These include the political history of the empire in the early modern period, the history of the city, literary studies, German studies , heraldry , memorial research , historical psychology, the history of childhood and folklore .

Editions of his writings

Overall edition project

Partial edition

  • The book Weinsberg: Cologne Memories from the 16th Century.
    • Volume 1, arr. by Konstantin Höhlbaum , Leipzig 1886 (publications by the Society for Rhenish History, Volume 3) ( digitized version ).
    • Volume 2, arr. by Konstantin Höhlbaum, Leipzig 1887 (publications by the Society for Rhenish History, Volume 4) ( digitized version ).
    • Volume 3, arr. by Friedrich Lau, Bonn 1897 (publications by the Society for Rhenish History, Volume 16.1). ( Digitized version ).
    • Volume 4, arr. von Friedrich Lau, Bonn 1898 (publications of the Society for Rhenish History, Volume 16.2) ( digitized version ).
    • Volume 5: Cultural-historical additions , edit. by Josef Stein, Bonn 1926 (publications by the Society for Rhenish History, Volume 16.3) ( digitized version ).

(This edition is no longer up-to-date in terms of textual criticism.)

Translations

  • Johann Jakob Hässlin: The book Weinsberg. From the life of a Cologne councilor. [first time 1961.] 5th edition, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-7616-1313-X . (popular scientific selection limited to a few sections in modern high German translation)

literature

see overall Tobias Wulf: Annotated Selection Bibliography. In: The autobiographical notes of Hermann Weinsberg - Digital Complete Edition (accessed on July 19, 2012)

  • Hermann Keussen :  Weinsberg, Hermann von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 55, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1910, p. 18 f.
  • Manfred Groten (Ed.): Hermann Weinsberg (1518–1597). Cologne citizen and councilor. Studies of life and work. Cologne 2005 (covers the current state of research).
  • Wolfgang Herborn: Hermann von Weinsberg (1518–1597). In: Rheinische Lebensbilder. Vol. 11, edited by Wilhelm Janssen , Cologne 1988, pp. 59-76.
  • Wolfgang Schmid: Cologne Renaissance culture as reflected in the records of Hermann Weinsberg (1518-1597). Cologne 1991 (publications of the Cologne City Museum, vol. 8)
  • Josef Stein: Hermann Weinsberg as a person and historian. In: Yearbook of the Cologne History Association. 4 (1917), pp. 109-169.
  • Wolfgang Herborn: The family von Schwelm / von Weinsberg. Development stages of a peasant family in a metropolitan milieu on the threshold of modern times. Contributions to the local history of the city of Schwelm In: Volume 32, 1982, pp. 36–62
  • Schwerhoff, G. The Transfiguration and Fall of the House of Weinsberg - A Failed History of Validity, or: On the happy coincidence of an ego document from the 16th century. Kloster-Stadt-Region Festschrift for Heinrich Rüthing J. ALTENBEHRENDT Bielefeld 2002 pp. 65–86

Web links

Commons : Hermann von Weinsberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Leonard Ennen, From the memorial book of Hermann Weinsberg , in: Journal for Kulturgeschichte, Volume 1, 1872, p. 554
  2. ↑ Kai-Peter Jankrift, With God and Black Magic: Medicine in the Middle Ages , 2005, p. 88
  3. ^ Leopold Ennen: From the book Weinsberg. In: Journal for German Cultural History , NF Vol. 1, 1872, p. 561.
  4. ^ Matthew Lundin, Paper Memory: A Sixteenth-Century Townsman Writes His World , 2012, p. 249.
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Herborn, Biographisches , in: The autobiographical records of Hermann Weinsbergs - Digital Complete Edition (accessed on July 19, 2012)
  6. ↑ See Wolfgang Herborn: The journeys and journeys of Hermann von Weinsberg. On the mobility of a Cologne citizen in the 16th century. In: Georg Mölich, Gerd Schwerhoff (ed.): Cologne as a communication center. Studies on the early modern city history. DuMont, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-7701-5008-2 , pp. 110-113.
  7. ^ Manfred Groten : On the work of Hermann Weinsberg. In: The autobiographical notes of Hermann Weinsberg - Digital Complete Edition (accessed on July 19, 2012)
  8. ↑ Exemplary reproductions of selected pages on the websites of the Bonn project Die Autobiographischen Aufschriften Hermann Weinsbergs - Digital Complete Edition . (accessed on July 19, 2012) .
  9. ^ City seeks location for new archive , article in the Kölnische Rundschau from April 3, 2009 (accessed on July 19, 2012) .
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Herborn: Hermann von Weinsberg (1518–1597). In: Rheinische Lebensbilder. Vol. 11, edited by Wilhelm Janssen , Cologne 1988, pp. 59-76.
  11. ^ Leopold Ennen: The book Weinsberg. In: Annals of the Historical Association for the Lower Rhine , Vol. 6, 1859, pp. 122–135; also Leopold Ennen: From the book Weinsberg. In: Zeitschrift für deutsche Kulturgeschichte , NF Vol. 1, 1872, pp. 554–570, 613–636, 764–775.
  12. ^ Peter Arnold Heuser: Hermann Weinsberg and the realm. In: Maximilian Lanzinner / Arno Strohmeyer (eds.): The Reichstag 1486 - 1613. Communication, perception, public. Göttingen 2006 (series of publications by the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Volume 73), pp. 375–402.
  13. ^ Gerd Schwerhoff : Elections in the premodern city between symbolic participation and decision-making power. The example of the Cologne councilor Hermann von Weinsberg (1518-1597). In: Christoph Dartmann / Günther Wassilowsky / Thomas Weller (eds.): Technology and symbols of premodern voting procedures. Munich 2010 ( historical journal , supplements NF 52), pp. 95–116.
  14. ↑ Peter Glasner : "A written to eternal memory ...": The remembering I with Hermann von Weinsberg (1518 - 1597) in the mediality of writing and image. In: Gerald Kapfhammer / Wolf-Dietrich Löhr / Barbara Nitsche (eds.): Author pictures. On the mediality of literary communication in the Middle Ages and early modern times. Münster 2007 (Tholos Kunsthistorische Studien 2), pp. 285–319.
  15. ^ Marie-Louise Balan: On the New High German Diphthongization in the Cologne book Weinsberg. In: Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter. Vol. 33, 1969, pp. 336-387.
  16. ↑ Wolfgang Schmid : A citizen and his characters. House brands and coats of arms in the diaries of Cologne chronicler Hermann Weinsberg. In: Karin Czaja / Gabriela Signori (ed.): Houses, names, identities. Contributions to late medieval and early modern city history. Konstanz 2009 (Late Middle Ages Studies, Volume 1), pp. 43–64.
  17. ↑ Birgit Studt : The householder. House and memory with Hermann von Weinsberg. In: Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter , Vol. 61, 1997, pp. 135-160.
  18. ^ Stephan Pastenaci : Narrative form and personality representation in German-language autobiographies of the 16th century. A contribution to historical psychology. Trier 1993, here pp. 90-145
  19. ^ Ralph Frenken: Childhood and autobiography from the 14th to 17th centuries: Psychohistorische reconstruction. Kiel 1999; Oetker-Voges, pp. 415-496; "That's when I started to remember ...": The psychohistory of the parent-child relationship in the earliest German autobiographies (1200 - 1700) . Giessen 2003, here pp. 220–241.
  20. ↑ Wolfgang Herborn: Laughter in the 16th century. The chronicle of Hermann von Weinsberg as a source for an emotion. In: Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde , Vol. 40, 1995, pp. 9-30.
personal data
SURNAME Weinsberg, Hermann von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cologne councilor and writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1518
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH March 23, 1597
Place of death uncertain: Cologne